Note:
some of the language, references & attitudes, while acceptable at the time
they were written, are not Politically Correct, today.

Summary:No official summary was ever
provided with any of the old Tom Swift books. However, without giving too much
away, the plot can be summed up as follows:

The book opens with Ned Newton working on
"small, but complicated mechanism." Ultimately, we find it is a "pocket
wireless sender" to be used to communicate via a cipher code if/when one of
the chums is in trouble. He proposes to Tom that a means of seeing through
brick walls would be invaluable in "finding criminals and anyone who might be
kidnapped." Tom has other things on his mind, and pooh-poohs the idea.

It seems that a secret vault, located
below his lab and protected by double-locks and alarms has been penetrated,
and a small wooden box containing the formula for a deadly war gas has been
stolen. Tom must recover the formula before it can be used to cause death &
destruction at home and abroad.

It is learned that the formula was
purloined by a nefarious foreigner who goes by the moniker "The Leopard." He
leaves three muddy thumbprints as a calling card whenever he works his evil
deeds, and seems to be able to come and go whenever he pleases, in spite of
locks, alarms, and watchmen. He was even seen to appear to fly over a fifteen
foot tall electrified fence.

I short, Ned's worst fears are realized
when he is captured and held as ransom against Tom finishing his detector and
using it to locate the Leopard and the stolen formula.

Along the way, Tom & Ned are accosted by
not one, but two bearded (-they are always bearded...) spies and
anarchists. They suffer hardships and solve technical mysteries that threaten
the project's completion. Ned is able to contact Tom with his pocket wireless,
and send the secret code.

Unfortunately, this volume is not
available on-line.

Cast of Characters

(More or less, in order of appearance.)

Ned
Newton-Chum & constant companion of Tom, currently Financial Manager of
Swift Construction Company. In spite of this high office, he seems to have
lots of time to go gallivanting on adventures with Tom.

Koku-Giant
manservant of Tom. Devoted, loyal, and possessed of great strength, but
apparently somewhat unsophisticated mental facilities. Antagonist and rival of
Eradicate.

Mr.
Korbis Alhazar-Inventor of an "instantaneous and deadly" poison gas "more
dangerous than TNT." Passing mention only. Does not appear in the story.

Midnite
Masked Marauder-One of many nefarious no-good-niks that seem to be able to
roam the grounds of Swift Construction, in spite of guards, gates,
alarms and electric fences.

Perkfield-NFN or description. Gate guard at SCC.

Eradicate, A.K.A. Rad-Aged stereotypical Negro manservant given over to
the ravages of advanced age (Rheumatism and failing eyesight, among others.)
Constant antagonist of Koku. Described as " feeble, eccentric and tottering."
Boomerang, Rad's mule, is mentioned for the first time in quite a
while.It is noted that he had passed on, some years previously, and is
remembered fondly..

Barton "Bart" Swift- Tom's aged and infirm father. In this episode, he
only is mentioned in passing, and plays no part in the story. Now being
attended full-time by Eradicate Sampson.

Martin-NLN or description. SCC go-fer.

The
Bearded Baddie-Later determined to be Argad Metomsix, A.K.A.
"The Leopard" or "Twisting Foot"-Evil agent of some unspecified
foreign (Asian or European) power. Highly educated, master locksmith,
mechanic, athlete and spy. Outstanding physical characteristic(s) are a large,
strong build, a bushy black beard and apparent ability to fly without wings.
(Actually, he is an Olympic-class pole vaulter.)

South
Gate Sam-No description or real name given. Watchman at the south end of
the SCC grounds. Tends a tomato patch that seems to distract him from spotting
the comings and goings of The Leopard, above.

Mr.
Wakefield Damon-Elderly & eccentric adventurer and traveling companion of
Tom & Ned, whose main purpose in life seems to be blessing everybody and
everything near his person. In this tome, he is apparently an avid, if
unskilled fisherman. His wife is again out of town, and he is off the leash
and running wild, once more.

Mr.
Benson Banlot-A man of "ordinary build." Special Agent of the United
States Secret Service, in charge of rooting out, capturing and deporting
anarchists, terrorists and other undesirable foreign-based elements.
Also willing & able to arrest local crooks, when the opportunity presents
itself. Carries a blue and gold badge.

Mr. Alex
Kalhofski-Evil agent of some unnamed foreign power. Quintessential
anarchist type: Outstanding physical characteristic(s) are: Wild-eyed, skinny,
and with bushy red hair & beard. Dedicated to bringing the government of the
United States to ruin. Principal quarry of Benson Banlot.

Mrs
Damon-NFN or description. Arrives home early and puts damper on Mr. D's
fishing trip.

Jim
Parkman-No description. Shopton fish monger. Makes arrangements with Mr. D
for him to have a successful fishing trip by "catching" some prime trout at
his shop.

Larsen &
Dubfold-Swift Construction "muscle." A cut above common thugs, these fine
folks speak proper English, are clean-cut, and use their bulk in the service
of the good guys.

Miss
Helen Morton-Love interest of Ned Newton. On "short list" to be married to
Ned. Cameo appearance, late in story.

Leopard's
Whelps-Three of the most stereotypical "thugs" ever captured on paper.
They are unnamed and proof that ( at least in the gangster world, ) muscle
times intellect equals a constant. Given over to the frequent use of the word
"youse." This makes one surmise they may hail from either one of the Five
Boroughs or possibly "Joisey." The only thing that would have made their
stereotype complete is snap-brim hats, striped shirts and black Lone
Ranger-style masks. Think "Beagle Boys" from Scrooge McDuck Comics. I'd call
them "Curly, Larry and Moe" for all their effectiveness as henchmen.

Major Inventions

Tom
Swift almost had to be cajoled and begged by Ned to invent something major in
this book. The Television Detector s a device that leverages parts of
the Photo Telephone and Talking Pictures machines. It will allow
remote viewing through brick or other solid walls at a distance. The device
uses a variable focusing device similar to the one on the Electric Rifle
and has a range of up to several miles. A Radium tube and a secret projector
are used to illuminate objects viewed through prisms on a special double-anode
high vacuum Cathode Ray Tube. The Radium illuminator allows viewing in total
darkness in full color at an included angle of 45 degrees in front of the
device. No sound reception is possible in this model, but Our Intrepid
Inventor has some ideas for future improvements.

The pocket wireless sender, an AC/DC radio
transceiver is about the size of a large cigarette case. It has a 10 mile
range, uses "short wave" technology and plays a key role in the rescue of Ned
from his kidnappers.

The Newton Secret Code allows Tom & Ned to
converse in private via Morse dots & dashes, using the pocket wireless sender.
Code is needed, since anyone with a similar device could "listen in." It is a
very complex and inefficient code with many nonsense filler/null characters
used.

Finally, there is the "Human Assimilator
of Congealed Delights." I'll leave that one up to the imagination of the
reader.

Commentary on Society, Attitudes, Environment & Errata

Reading the
old Tom Swift Sr. series has really given me an appreciation of all the modern
gadgets that I've come to take for granted. It also has given me a grasp of just
how technologically and culturally unsophisticated the average reader was in the
early 1900's.

Attitudes and
Prejudices- Some clews (although that term is no longer used)
that were detected as to the author of this tale: This tale reeks with
significant foreboding, (bordering on clairvoyance,) to prepare for
events that make the plot come out. Ned makes no less than 6 references to the
following: "Maybe we really ought to finish that secret code and build a
TV Detectorjust in casesomebody gets kidnapped and we
need it to rescue them." (Then, he gets kidnapped-D'oh!)

Emphasis is no longer on finances and money
troubles, as in the previous few tales. This is an ordinary cops & robbers / spy
story. The attitude shift goes along with the statement that "there is a great
unrest in parts of Europe." It's 1932, and a certain Austrian paperhanger with a
toothbrush moustache is now in charge of a thoroughly aroused and angry Germany.

Some techno-things are actually described
correctly. (See Fact vs. Fantasy, below,)
but the author's engineering knowledge is iffy. There is a large amount
of padding in the story that boosts the page count. Language is wholly modern &
slang. No older English was used except "Jigger" (used eight times) and Ned
swearing by "Jinx" rather than Tom's "Jove." The language used definitely points
at Harriet Stratemeyer's touch, but the story line seems 'way too rough for her
to have penned it. Kidnapping, knockout drugs, guns and bombs play significant
parts in the plot. This, along with an intimate familiarity with several
previous tales (Airline Express and Talking Pictures) make me
think of this author as "Navy Nick." I'll hang responsibility for it and the
other two stories mentioned above, on him.

Firearms have been utilized in other
stories, but usually only for intimidation value during break-ins. No one gets
shot, except critters and, possibly rampaging natives. In this tale, Tom keeps
an automatic in his desk. It's also the second story that I have read
which includes an actual firefight, and the first with an actual gunshot injury
& fatality during the climactic capture of the bad guys. (pp, 210-211) Normally,
any violence in these stories is limited to Koku busting a few heads, or Tom
getting knocked out or drugged. I guess G-Men aren't as finicky about warning
shots as Tom is.

Finally, if any one of the average bad-guys
in these stories had any familiarity with a safety razor, they would know that
being clean-shaven was a perfect disguise. Beards (and being "foreign") seem to
be the characteristic distinguishing marks of the nemeses in these stories.

Errata-There
is a running gag throughout this series. Mr. Damon's home keeps flip-flopping
between Waterfield and Waterford, NY. Sometimes it is in neither,
and several times in both places, at once. This is partly due to the enforced
poor communication amongst the many ghostwriters at G&D that contributed to this
series.

There are now 4 distinct categories. For the
1st time in a while, in this tome, Mr. D's home flips to Waterfield.

The tally for 36 volumes, to date is:

Waterfield-17,
Both places-2, Waterford-10, and Neither place-7.

Typos and malapropisms were nonexistent.
Nothing jumped out at me.

Engineering and
Science, Fact vs. Fantasy- It's amazing how far around the circle
technology has come in 90 years. In July of 2004, it was announced that a
wall-penetrating wide-band radar remote viewing device was being developed for
the military and law enforcement use. A prototype device called the RADAR
Flashlight, developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), can detect
a human's presence through doors and walls up to 8 inches thick.

Another
announcement (Jan 2005) revealed a device more along the lines of a real-world
Tom Swift, invention. An excerpt is below.

Hurtubise says invention sees through walls-BayToday.ca exclusive

By Phil
Novak BayToday.ca Sunday, January 16, 2005

Troy Hurtubise has done the seemingly
impossible with his newest invention and defied all known rules of physics, he
says. The Angel Light-Hurtubise claims the concept came to him in a recurring
dream-can reportedly see through walls, as if there was no barrier at all. An
unpleasant side effect of this viewing device is that the energy used to make it
work is injurious and/or fatal to living organisms. I guess that means the
girls' locker rooms at the local high schools are safe for the moment-or perhaps
very unsafe...

They do not
lend credence to the claims made by Hurtubise regarding this device, as
excerpted, here:

Angel Light-Most
recently, Hurtubise has designed the Angel Light, a large device that he claims
can see through walls, see into flesh, detect radar-resistant aircraft, and
disable electronic devices. Hurtubise claims that the design for the Angel Light
came to him in a series of three dreams, and that he was able to build it from
memory, with no schematic.

The Angel Light is tubular in shape, several
feet long, and is constructed in three units. The "centrifuge" unit, contains
logic devices, black, white, red and fluorescent light sources, as well as seven
industrial lasers. It is unknown whether the centrifuge unit includes an actual
centrifuge. The "deflector grid" unit is made up of a circular piece of optical
glass, a microwave unit, and plasma combined with carbon dioxide. The third,
unnamed unit contains eight plasma light rods, CO2 charges, industrial magnets,
108 mirrors, eight ionization cells, industrial lights, and a variety of other
electronics.

Hurtubise is allegedly receiving
undocumented and secret assistance, both financial and technical, from unnamed
workers at MIT, the French government, and the somehow-anonymous former head of
Saudi counter-intelligence to construct and explore the device's properties.
Through these channels, he claims to have acquired a sample of the stealth
radar-resistant panelling used on the U.S. Comanche helicopter.

Much of the details of Hurtubise's claims
seem either incorrect or exaggerated, and because of this, it is worth noting
that none of the spectacular capabilities of the Angel Light have ever been
photographed, even though Hurtubise has allowed media members to photograph the
device itself, and the light it emits while operating.

Although Hurtubise's prior technologies have
been demonstrated to have genuine value, both financially and scientifically,
his extraordinary claims about the capabilities of this device (particularly
medical claims) have prompted skeptics to label Hurtubise a charlatan. Although
Hurtubise has publically offered a cash reward for proof that his device doesn't
work, he has not been so forthcoming with basic evidence that it actually does
work.

There is currently (20 September 2005) no
indication that Hurtubise is lying, however Hurtubise's claims are so unusual
that it is not unreasonable for
skepticism to follow such claims.

The "Pocket
Wireless" is the FRS radio or cell phone that we take for granted
today. That it had a 10 mile range in a package little larger than a "cigarette
case" was stupendous engineering for the time. All this without the yards-long
antennas required by radios of the day, and no transistors or integrated
circuits, to boot. With a tube amplifier that little box must have been the
forerunner of "Hot Pockets" if allowed to stay in Ned's slacks while operating.

The dry cell(s)
that powered it had to be
"Pink Bunny
Specials," too.

(
Pretentious note to future readers: The pink rabbit is the trademark of a
company that sells especially long-lasting chemical/electrical conversion
devices.) Powering tube radios with batteries was indeed done at the time, but
the batteries (both "A" and "B" varieties) were much bigger than what could be
carried in a pocket. It's also interesting that the set made no noise. The
pop/crack/sizzle and clang of the typical spark gap radio (which prompted Tom to
invent a "silent" one in the next book) seemed absent. If it were the usual
noisy spark-gap type, Ned would have been busted the first time he tried to use
it.

It is quite apparent that the dangerous
nature of Radium was unknown to the author(s) of this story at the time it was
written. Marie Curie, the ground-breaking physicist who pioneered advances in
radiology would not succumb to Radium-induced Leukemia until the summer
following this story's first printing. In a real world, Tom and Ned would be
quickly poisoned by contact with this dangerous element, especially in the
absence of even the rudimentary safety precautions used during handling and use
in that day. While getting a visible image on a Selenium plate would have been
possible, "living color" as was described, would have taken much more equipment.
The Selenium image would be green monotone, like today's night vision devices.

Geography-"Crystal
Cave" is said to be located about 5 miles from Shopton. There is a
commercial show cave near Pottersville, NY, the Natural Stone Bridge & Caves.
NSB is about 25 minutes from Lake George, off route I-87 and may
be what the author used as a template. The Geodes found there in abundance
surely would qualify as "crystal," and it's in the right neighborhood.

There is a city of Chester near Shopton,
noted in Diamond Makers, and a Chesterport in House on Wheels.
Interestingly, in the New York of our universe, there is a Chestertown, just
down the road a ways from Crystal/Natural Stone Bridge Caves.